Beyond Superfly

The film American Gangster centers on Frank Lucas, the richest, baddest heroin-dealing black gangster in early '70s Harlem, but don't expect Lucas' character to be a blaxploitation throwback. Basing their story on true events as reported by Mark Jacobson in his 2000 New York article, director Ridley Scott, screenwriter Steven Zaillian and actor Denzel Washington bring Lucas into the 21st century — he's a pressed-suit businessman, a drug-dealing CEO. In Scott's telling, Lucas succeeded not because he was more ruthlessly violent than the mafia, but because he ruthlessly executed his entrepreneurial insight: delivering a better product at a lower price by working directly with the manufacturer (the Chinese army) to an emerging market (Vietnam veterans and ghetto dwellers).

Upon its release in early November, Entertainment Weekly declared American Gangster the "first entry in the Oscar race." Despite the early hype, American Gangster didn't make the cut for Best Picture, nor was there even much talk for it. Though most popcorn reviewers enthusiastically declared Gangster "a powerful piece of entertainment!" or, better still, "Smack Daddy Denzel Fly as Fierce 70's Pusher Man," a negative critical undercurrent stalled the film's momentum. Dissenting critics questioned the film's moral footing: For example, EW's own Owen Gleiberman was uneasy with the depiction of Frank Lucas as a "role model," and The New Yorker's David Denby upbraided Ridley Scott for presenting Frank Lucas as a "victory of black capitalism."

The essence of the negative critical undercurrent was their reading of the rise of Frank Lucas as straight hero worship. Gleiberman confuses mafioso rap's movie-gangster obsession with heroic "role modeling," as if we're supposed to walk out of the theater saying, "That Frank Lucas, boy, that negro really made a lot of money!" Denby, on the other hand, fails to see the dark irony of Scott's capitalist critique. Denby seems to conclude that the audience will see Frank Lucas as the Rosa Parks of heroin. But just as Frank Lucas left the mob behind, American Gangster has these critics. Ridley Scott and company did not create a "role model;" they created cinema's first "post-gangster" character.